Moonlight Sonata
by thorn-bird
Summary: Dusk and Beethoven in the background, three swamp rats muse and reflect. No slash! I can't believe it.


The sun is setting, leaving the earth cool and comfortable. Not overwhelmingly hot, not freezing…surprising, considering Korea usually has no in-between.

But now, this…this, is nice. It's quiet. No casualties for a while, war's been quiet. Hawkeye swirls the gin in his glass round and round and Charles is on his back, his eyes closed, his mind on cape cod with some rich grand daughter of—oh, who am I kidding? His mind is on cape cod with _himself_. On his record player is Beethoven's _Moonlight Sonata_, and the mood right now is just too nice for BJ to complain about the 14 minute piece as he usually would. Now it seems soothing, it seems fitting, it seems…right. He'd never tell Hawk that he's actually enjoying something of Charles's, but judging from the day-dreaming expression on his face, Hawkeye is rather enjoying it himself.

BJ's world is currently the color of a bouquet in brown paper. Orange lilies, and sunflowers and…daffodils, like the ones in his yard back home. They'd flourish come April, and Peg would delicately snip them off and keep them in vases around the house until their season was done. She bought vases like crazy each spring, as she always managed to break them somehow. BJ would wake up to find them beside the bed, beside his breakfast plate, on the dashboard of his—

He has to blink hard to keep the tears away. He does not look up, just keeps his eyes focused on his lap.

* * *

What is a sonata, anyway? German for 'sleeping pill'? Hey, Hawkeye Pierce appreciates the arts, but this is so—oh, never mind. He kind of likes it. It's nice. Calming. Which is what he needs right now. He's tired, but he just can't sleep.

If he squints hard, he is in the waiting room to his practice. Just imagine Charles's cot is the doorway to the exam room, BJ is Edna (picture him with gray hair in a tight bun, a nurse's uniform…don't laugh, Hawk, then you'll have to admit what you're thinking about) behind her desk. There are people in the waiting room…Mike's back to refill his prescription, the Rubenstein baby has pneumonia again…Boston's so huge, yet the same people always come round in these fantasies. It's the only way he remembers it. Nice, that it's still familiar even though he's been away for a year and a half.

If he closes his eyes all the way, Hawkeye is down at the Mystic, the water lapping at his feet as Irish scream with laughter from the bar behind him. He reaches down to touch the water. He knows he shouldn't, because it's ridiculously unsanitary…worse than the instruments at the 4077th, if that's imaginable. He feels the coolness, then, he is gone from his fantasies into the sweet release of sleep.

* * *

Beethoven reminds Charles of summer at Grandmother's. The memory smells like cold orange juice and fresh croissants. Grandmother's cook, Rosa, made them fresh every morning, especially for Charles. He adored them so.

Rosa had a daughter, Dolores, with skin the color of coffee with cream—that golden brown that came from her Hispanic heritage. Her hair was curly and black as night; coarse as he ran his fingers through it. Eyes the color of oak, and they glistened with excitement as Charles walked across the floor to her, his own eyes focused on her pacific rose mouth. He played _Violin Romance _on Grandmother's phonograph, and he hummed it softly as they shared a forbidden kiss in his Grandmother's bedroom. He was just fifteen.

He grasped for romantic words to whisper into her ear. The music was perfect. But all he could manage was, "I love you", and when Grandmother found out just two weeks later Rosa was fired. Dolores sobbed as she dragged her suitcase from the mansion, and Charles kept his eyes on the floor. He never saw her again, but he thought of her on nights like this, solemn dusks as the sun was setting and Moonlight Sonata played softly behind him, just like it had the night Dolores left, so loudly he could not hear himself crying.

It was a night not unlike tonight, and he chooses nights like this to remember it. He glances at his roommates, he glances at the sewer around him, and even the painful remembrance of that summer is not biting enough to numb this current sensation.


End file.
